A wireless telecommunication carrier may operate brick-and-mortar retail locations to serve their customers. At such retail locations, customers may purchase new mobile devices, receive technical support for their existing mobile devices, return or exchange their mobile devices, or upgrade their existing mobile communication devices to newer devices with more advanced features. Customer service representatives of the wireless telecommunication carrier working at these brick-and-mortar retail locations are tasked with assisting the customers with such transactions.
For example, a customer service representative may verify the identity of the customer, ensure that the mobile device being returned, exchanged, or upgraded is eligible to receive such service, and provide other assistance to the customer. The verification of a mobile device for return, exchange, or upgrade often involves a customer service representative manually entering a mobile device identifier into a store computer system to retrieve an eligibility status of the mobile device. However, since mobile device identifiers are often composed of long strings of alphanumeric characters, such manual entry of a mobile device identifier may be time consuming and error prone. Accordingly, a customer service representative may have to make repeated attempts until the mobile device identifier is properly inputted into the store computer system.
Further, in some instances, mobile devices may not have mobile device identifiers readily printed or etched on their casings. In such instances, a customer service representative may have to locate the appropriate mobile device user interface menus of the mobile devices in order to retrieve the mobile device identifiers. Given the variability in mobile device models and software configurations, the unfamiliarity of the customer service representative with different mobile device identifier retrieval procedures may further hinder the ability of the customer service representative to input mobile device identifiers into the store computer system.